You can’t use one part of the bible to deny rights to someone. Then just gloss over other parts.
It’s all or none.
My child care provider pulled her daughter out of that school about 5 years ago, and has been home schooling her since. The final straw for her was when her second grade daughter came home and said that she was taught that cave paintings and dinosaurs weren’t for real because there couldn’t have been anyone or anything around millions of years ago, since that didn’t match the time frame specified by the bible.
?
Really? Who died and left you in charge of scriptural usage?
Certainly, there are people who hold that every (non-metaphorical) verse in the bible is literally true.
However, there is a whole range of beliefs held regarding the bible (including but not limited to):
- that the “Old Testament” has been “fullfilled” by the New, rendering many of the laws of the Old moot;
- that the bible relates a process of revelation that notes the perceptions of people regarding their relationship with God at various points in history, allowing both their understanding and their interaction with God to grow, so that later generations can recognize where earlier generations misunderstood God’s intentions based on their culture;
- that God inspires different individuals to understand what he “really” meant, regardless what we find written in the book.
And, of course, Chrsitian (and Jewish) history has several occurrences of people picking and choosing what they wish to take from Scripture.
Your attempt to declare what followers of the bble “must” or “must not” do when reading scripture has no more validity than someone insisting that atheists “must” seek to destroy religion. This very thread has pointed out people who actually did use the bible to oppose and to defend slavery. Are you going back in time and telling them they cannot do that?
You are simply blowing smoke–and making yourself look foolish.
Yeah, “devout” would be a good term, I’d think. Certainly the world would be a better place if more Christians were like Quakers and less like Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Tilton, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell. . .
Well…either the entire book is the word of of God or it’s not.
Which is it?
Only the rabid fundies make that false dichotomy, Reeder. Reasonable Christians don’t.
Ok…you tell me what part God wrote. And what part man wrote.
Regardless whether or not it is the word of God, the “word of God” can be understood differently by different people. I really doubt that anyone is going to change thier beliefs (or lack of them) because you insist on imposing your narrow view on their lives.
I’m not even sure why you are arguing your position, since it does not change the actions of the school under discussion and no participants in this thread are going to let you dictate their beliefs to them.
I’m not Christian (I’m not religious at all), so I can’t do that, since I don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God. But I know a lot of Christians, including the ones I respect most on this board, believe that the Bible is the Word of God as interpreted and written down by human beings, and then interpreted again by the immediate reader.
That means that the things that we think it says may not be what it really means, and that applies to things that Christians believed it said in the past as well.
Which I think is a great thing. Regardless of what you think my motives are.
My point is…if you use the bible to base your points on in one case…you can’t distance yourself from other points made in the bible.
Reeder, IIRC, tomndebb is Roman Catholic. (As I was raised). Catholicism does NOT believe in Biblical literalism, nor that, “Oh, well, the Bible says it, that’s so!” Catholicism teaches that Scripture is not always easy to understand, or as black and white as the fundamentalists would have us believe.
Well thank you for the explanation of atheism. I guess when I see sites like “evilbible.com” and sites picking and choosing ‘bad verses’ from the bible, it seems like they ARE trying to show why we should reject its teachings. But you are correct, to paint all atheists the same was a crime as bad as Reeder painting all Christians that way. I apologize and thank you.
As for Reeder asking for my interpretation of the slavery verses, perhaps you could take one moment out of your frothy rage and read my posts. On the FIRST PAGE OF THE THREAD I said that 1) I felt the slavery of the Old Testament WAS a different situation than the slavery of the 19th century (not race based, but monetarily based, although also abhorrent and 2) The New Testament passages were used as a metaphor for our loyalty to Christ and his teachings.
Christ doesn’t want anyone to serve two masters. He is our teacher, our leader, and to own another human being, thus becoming his master is wrong.
Lastly, don’t accuse me of withholding rights from anyone Reeder. I voted for Kerry, I am FOR Gay marriage, and I’m against slavery.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have flown off the handle at your initial idiotic statement, but it’s so fucking hard to hold my tongue around your stereotypical bullshit.
Rage? I feel no rage.
I think it’s funny.
Religion. The opiate of the masses.
Huh? If I read a book and find I agree with something in chapter 1 I cannot disagree with some point that the author makes in chapter 4?
No they weren’t. They were literal instructions to slaves.
No, of course not. At least not as far as a Marxist like Reeder’s concerned.
Leave her alone.
Let’s not pop her bubble.
Thank you for your cogent reply to my interpretations and indeed my apology. :rolleyes:
Diogenes
Sorry, I don’t take the Bible as word for word literal translation. But your interpretation is interesting. I think the letters to the Ephesians, in particular, were evangelical in nature.
Wow. I have been espousing marxism?
Who knew?
If I quote earnestly from “Mein Kampf,” should I expect people not to think I espouse Nazism?
I’m beginning to think you’re working for the fundies in an attempt to make all of us agnostics/atheists look like loons. And doing a hell of a job.